1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to disk drive suspensions, and, more particularly to improvements in the use of damping material on disk drive suspension load beams to avoid environmental degradation from outgassing of the organic damping material, or from moisture absorption and contaminant attraction by the damping material.
2. Related Art
Damping material comprises various organic, visco-elastic compositions, generally polymeric in nature, that have the property of absorbing and dissipating vibrational energy and thus serve to limit increases in amplitude of vibrations experienced by disk drive suspensions. Damping materials have been placed on suspension load beams for some years, usually as a multilayer structure of the damping material, a metal backing and optionally adhesive layers to maintain the damping material in place.